


Touch Like Needles in the Skin

by Julesin



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Aromantic Jughead, Asexual Jughead, Other, This is mostly a Character study, Touch Averse! Jughead, i love him so much protect the boy, lets be honest this is just me being salty about bughead and the erasure of ace/aro jughead, someone please talk to Jughead about boundaries no one ever does that i need it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10669560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julesin/pseuds/Julesin
Summary: Living in a small town has its perks. Everything is close to home, friends are never far away. He can walk basically everywhere. It also has its downsides, like everyone you know going to the same school as you for basically your whole life.





	Touch Like Needles in the Skin

The first time he realized he was abnormal was in 2nd grade, when Carla, a girl in his class who his friend said had a crush on him, asked him to the school dance. Jughead had panicked and said yes, and only felt better when she left the room with her friends. 

At the dance itself, he'd avoided her like the plague, made excuses not to dance, and basically abandoned her. She'd cried, and had ignored him for the rest of the school year. He should have felt bad about it, regretted it, but if he was honest, he just felt relieved that she was leaving him alone again. 

In middle school, he became friends with a girl in his class who listened to the same music as him, and he felt like he could actually talk to her. Eventually, one evening when he was at her house, he confided in her, emptying out his worries about his family and and his anxiety. When he stopped talking, the look on her face had changed, and a knot of discomfort settled in his stomach moments before she had leaned forward and kissed him. He'd immediately pulled away, sputtering and freaked out, and she had reacted badly as well, starting to tear up and standing in anger. She's talked down to him, saying he'd led her on to think he liked her, and had grabbed his things and shoved them at him before going downstairs to have her mom call his. He didn't talk to his mom on the way home, and upon getting to his family's trailer, he got into bed and tried to sleep, though his eyes didn't close all night. 

Something was wrong with him, that had to be it. When he confessed to his friend the following morning what had happened, the boy asked with wide eyes why he'd pulled away. Jughead said he didn't know, he'd freaked out, but that wasn't true. He couldn't tell anyone, but when she'd kissed him, he'd started shaking, alarm bells had gone off in his head like he was in imminent danger, and his skin had felt like needles were being pushed in all over. He'd pulled away because she'd freaked him out, yes, but it was more than that. It was because his mind had told him something was very, very wrong, and he didn't have the time or the words to tell her what it was. 

She spread rumors about him for the rest of the year, telling people that he didn't like girls. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the term "gay," and it wasn't the first time he'd heard it in a negative tone, but it was the first time the insult was aimed at him. His mom told him it wasn't a bad thing to be, that it was normal, but the way the kids said it made him feel worthless. 

The thing was, he didn't think he was even gay. When a friend (one he'd made that was more accepting and didn't immediately back-off when people said Jug was gay) asked him if there were any boys he liked, he couldn't answer. Sure there were cute boys. He knew he could appreciate cute people, whether boys or girls. But when he watched movies or read books, people always talked about butterflies in the stomach, being embarrassed around crushes and stuttering. He had never felt that way. He'd already figured something was badly wrong with him by then, that he was wired completely different from others and that something had gone wrong in his head, but it still hurt when the he confided these thoughts in someone he trusted and they abandoned him. 

Then he got to high school. 

Living in a small town has its perks. Everything is close to home, friends are never far away. He can walk basically everywhere. It also has its downsides, like everyone you know going to the same school as you for basically your whole life. So when he got to high school, nothing really changed, though now he was the weird gay emo kid (as opposed to just the weird gay kid) due to his new found love for dark clothes and being completely alone (though the latter may have been mostly because people didn't generally want to be around him). 

Archibald Andrews was the first person who gave him a chance. 

The rumors about him being gay settled down and eventually vanished, but he was still as avoided as ever…except for one person. Archie. The redhead had approached him outside of school in 8th grade, asking to be his friend out of the blue. When Jughead became irrationally angry and scathingly remarked on his circumstances, wondering why Archie had approached the weird, sad, bullied gay kid, the other boy had stayed infuriatingly calm, simply saying that he didn’t care what other people said. That had surprised Jughead, and at some point over the following year, after they’d hung out countless times, gone to movies, listened to music, laughed, cried—he suddenly realized that Archie and him were friends.

Which was why it hurt so bad when Archie seemingly abandoned him for a Grundy.

Junior year was hard, but for Riverdale high, “hard” was the understatement of the year. Jason’s death, Archie’s affair, the drive-in closing. For Jughead, it just seemed to get worse and worse, and when he started getting closer to Betty, he thought it might be the one good thing to happen his whole life. Yet…he still felt nothing. Not butterflies. No irrational smiles when she was around. Even when he kissed her, he felt nothing. He’d hoped beyond hope that whatever this was he was feeling, it would be the thing that changed him, revealed him as a late bloomer instead of as asexual and aromantic.

He’d done his research. He’d felt so much relief when finding out that he wasn’t alone… But it hadn’t been enough. Somewhere deep down he still held an irrational belief that someday he’d fall in love like a normal person. It didn’t help that Betty didn’t seem to notice his dilemma, too preoccupied with her sister (which he couldn’t exactly blame her for, just…it hurt).

The one thing that seemed to be a constant was Archie. Even after finding out about his affair with his music teacher, Jughead had stayed by his side, trying to help him stay calm and get out of the messes he continuously got himself into. It was hard but he wouldn’t have traded Archie’s friendship for the world, and when Archie told Jug that he could stay with him, it was one of the best moments he could think of in his life.

At some point, he realized that he had to break up with Betty. The relationship wasn’t working. Maybe in some other world, where neither of them were as strung out or stressed, where Jason hadn’t died, where Jughead wasn’t aromantic, it might have worked. But not here. She told him when he did that she had sort of been thinking the same, and that despite the fact that she cared for him deeply, she didn’t think it was quite like that after all. They resolved to stay friends, and she’d kissed him on the cheek.

When Kevin questioned why Jughead was so weirdly happy later, he hadn’t had an answer. He told Kev that he’d broken up with Betty, and though Kevin was sad, he said he understood. Then he told Jughead something that stuck with him, that would haunt him for weeks.

“I just figured you and Archie had finally made out or something. Everyone can see that you guys got something there.”

After this statement, Jughead couldn’t see his interactions with Archie the same. He realized that sometimes his gaze would linger a little too long. That seeing Archie happy made him irritatingly happy, and that when the ginger was upset Jughead responded similarly. When it was dark, he would look at Archie and wonder how this angel of moonlight had descended down to Earth to inhabit this irritating, idiotic, beautiful high school boy.

Was this what love was? He didn’t feel like they said he would. He felt calm around Archie, not embarrassed. When they were apart, he felt cut up, distracted, and it was because he was thinking about the ginger. At some point, he had started viewing the two of them as halves of a whole, a beautiful whole that he couldn’t hope to understand. 

He confided in Betty. He could tell she was still hurt from the break up, and he felt horrible talking to her about another person he might be interested in, but he needed someone to dump all this onto other than himself. Usually that person was Archie, but given the circumstances, he figured that wasn’t the best course of action. He told her that he was asexual and aromantic. He told her that he hated dating. He told her that sometimes being touched by other people made him want to die. And he told her that Archie Andrews was sometimes the only thing he could think of in an entire day and he didn’t know why.

She listened thoughtfully, never interrupting. When he was finished, she simply told him “Love doesn’t have to be romantic or sexual. If you love him, you love him. That doesn’t mean you have to fuck, or kiss, or date. It simply means that you love him. And if that’s enough, that’s enough.”

She added that she thought Jug should tell him though, as an afterthought.

He mulled for days. He laid in his bed under the school stairs late in the night, his eyes glazed over as he stared at the ceiling and thought about Archie. About how devastated Archie would be when he found out Jug had lied about having a place to sleep. About how long his eyelashes were. About how deeply he cared for others. About his huge smile when Betty or Veronica made him laugh. About how passionate he looked when making music. 

Maybe Jughead did love Archie. And maybe he could live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> i hate and love this show  
> this is not meant as hate on bughead (though i am salty) or betty (i actually really like her recent character development and she obviously has a great actor, her character could go places that i like (if cw doesnt fuck up like usual))  
> this is just a characters study  
> a love letter to jughead  
> i love my boy


End file.
